On October 10, 2019, the Bronx Borough President, Ruben Diaz Jr. who is a trustee of the New York City Employees Retirement System (NYCERS), called for the investment consultants and asset managers of NYCERS to include minorities in their clique.
It makes straight ‘A’ sense; the majority of NYC employees, about 350,000 of them, whose assets these managers manage are public -sector employees, and they are as diverse as the City of New York. But like most corridors of power are sealed by a tempered glass, the realm of pension fund management comes with class. Unless a referee for the underserved and unprivileged speak up, the status quo may as well remain the legalized tradition.
[bctt tweet=”For a true upward economic mobility goal, the minorities have got to be in it to win it”] Public pension fund is a major investment in the United States and around the world. According to Investopedia, in 2018, asset managers of both public and private-sector pension plans managed over $8.6 trillion in the United States. Public Pension Fund alone held about $5.9 trillion assets in 2016.
Pension fund asset management in the United States is big, but the poor and the minorities hardly have a chance. They are the masses; they command its wave, and stimulate it, but are often precluded in the management arena.
How we allocate our money is a decision that says more about our priorities than almost any other action we can take, so I thank the NYCERS board for their support of our resolution,…… For too long, we have fallen short in ensuring there is enough opportunity to qualified MWBE fund managers to compete to manage our assets and this resolution is a huge step forward towards providing true equity at one of the largest pension management systems in the world.
This BPP Ruben Diaz Jr.’ resolution that just passed the NYCERS board of trustee would set a mandate on diversity and inclusion within NYCERS asset management and retirement benefit administration. The resolution specifically called for the involvement of Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (MWBE)
Talk about genuine upward economic mobility strategies that aren’t laid with empty talks or a safe face implementation, this could be one of them.
Though this Bronx Borough President resolution speaks for the NYC minority in general, no place could feel it deeply as much as the Borough of Bronx with a population of one and a half million, and well over half of this number are of Latino and African/Black ethnic origin. About two-thirds of African immigrant population living in New York City are in the Bronx.
What this resolution now needs to watch out for is its execution since these days diversity/inclusion is oftentimes getting mixed up with the affirmative action: get a white woman, an Asian looking person, a mixed race black person, and boom, “See? We are as diverse as diversity could get!”
[bctt tweet=” these days diversity/inclusion is oftentimes getting mixed up with the affirmative action: get a white woman, an Asian looking person, a mixed race black person, and boom, “See? We are as diverse as diversity could get!” “]
